"...players get twitchy about things like that. For understandable reasons players like to control their own characters, and would feel sandbagged with "Hey! Turns out you're a clone and you've been playing a fake of yourself these last six sessions and the real you has no memory or experience points from those last six sessions!"

This was echoed by Theron Bretz in Facebook's Villains & Vigilantes Forum, who said: "I'd be very hesitant to do something like this without the player's knowledge. It's a potential minefield."

However, he added that had played in a game where "one of the PCs was replaced by a 'mirror universe' version of himself, but the player was in on it (though only he and the GM knew). It was great."

Larry Mikulich shared a story from a campaign where his character had been replaced by an "Adaptoid android" while his actual PC was locked up in an underground base for six months of gametime.

Again, as with Theron's anecdote, Larry said:

"The GM let me in on it from the word 'go'. It was just a good subplot. Early 20-something heroes, my character developed feelings for another PC. I laid the groundwork early on with romance and stuff so when the GM switched my character out with an android doppelganger it was even cooler...because the android made out with the PC."

The question remains, whether you have experienced this sub-plot or simply entertained the idea, would it work in your campaign? How important is 'trust' before you pulled such a plot twist on the group? How would you feel if your GM pulled this stunt on you?

2 comments:

Well Tim, I'm here to offer a counter point. In a superhero game I assume that ANYTHING is possible, and it wouldn't bother me in the least if my GM were to replace my character with a clone, Slimulacrum, etc. Because I Trust Him!! If the GM does something like that there will be an interesting story about what happened to the "Original" me while I was piloting the clone. Maybe even a series of one on one adventures to fill in the gaps.

And Hell while I'm unknowingly piloting the clone, at far as I know it is my character. Hell, once its discovered that I've been playing the clone I may even choose to keep playing him, because maybe the original is actually a huge asshole.

I strongly suspect that my character in the Vanguard City campaign isn really Christopher Church a.k.a Genome, but rather a Different being that replaced him when he died under the carful ministrations of Dr. Victor Lazlo. It has his memories, it currently thinks it Chris Church, but its not.

Now the GM (Percy) and I have never talked about this but I strongly suspect this is what is going on, and it's amazing.

Hell for all I know the real Chris Church could actually still be out there, or the creature call Genome could have metastasized at some point and there could be more than one Pseudo Chris church out there.